knew just how I came there. A man-servant wheeled in a portable
tea-table and placed it beside a particular chair, lighted the lamp
under the kettle, and silently departed. And with the stage thus
disposed Miss Hollister herself appeared. She greeted me without
surprise and much as she might have spoken to any guest in her house.
I had sometimes been treated as though I were the agent of a
decorator's shop, or a delinquent plumber, by the people whom I served;
but Miss Hollister and her niece established me upon a plane that was
wholly social. I was made to feel that it was the most natural thing
in the world for me to be there, having tea, with no business ahead of
me but to be agreeable. The fact that I had come to correct the
distemper of their flues was utterly negligible. I remembered with
satisfaction that I had journeyed from town in a new business suit that
made the best of my attenuated figure, and I will not deny that I felt
at ease.
Miss Hollister talked briskly as she made the tea.
"I was over at the kennels when you came. I believe the kennel-master
is a rascal, Cecilia. I have no opinion of him whatever."
"He was highly recommended," replied the niece. "It's not his fault
that the fox terriers were sick."
"I dare say it is n't," said the old lady, measuring the tea; "but it's
his fault that he whipped one of those Cuban hounds,--I 'm sure he
whipped her. The poor beast was afraid to crawl out when I called her
this afternoon."
"We were warned against those dogs, Aunt Octavia; but I must admit that
they have lovely eyes."
Miss Cecilia's manner toward her aunt left nothing to be desired; it
was wholly deferential and kind, and her dignity, I surmised, was equal
to any emergency that might rise between them.
"Do you ever shoot behind traps?" demanded Miss Hollister abruptly.
The question surprised me. I did not shoot behind traps or anywhere
else, for that matter; but it delighted me to find that her unusual
interests, as she had touched upon them at the Asolando, were part of a
consistent scheme of life. She talked of her experiments with
different guns and traps, her arms folded, her eyes reverting
occasionally to the kettle. It was all in the shells, she said.
Before she had begun filling her own cartridges she had no end of
trouble.
"It is not necessary for you to take tea if you don't care for it, Mr.
Ames," she said, as I rose and handed the first cup to Cecilia. "If
you will touch the bell at your elbow you may have liquids of quite
another sort. It may interest you to know that this temperance wave
that is sweeping the country does not interest me in the least. Our
great Americans of the old times were gentlemen who took their liquor
with no cowardly fear of public censure. You will find my sideboard
well stocked after the fashion of old times; and I have with my own
hand placed in your room a quart of Scotch given me at the distillery
four years ago by its proprietor, Lord Mertondale. A case of like
quality is yours at any moment you choose to press the button at the
head of your bed."
"You are most generous, Miss Hollister. Tea will suffice for the
moment. It is fitting that I should take it here, it having been a
weakness for tea as well as curiosity and chance that threw me in your
way at the Asolando."
"That absurd, that preposterous hole in the wall!"
She put down her cup and faced me, continuing: "Mr. Ames, I will not
deny that if it had not been for General Glendenning's cordial
indorsement of you, and the further fact that I had met your late
father, I should not have invited you to my house on the occasion to
which you refer. My contempt for the Asolando and the things it stands
for is beyond such language as a lady may use before the young."
I laughed at her earnestness; but on turning toward Miss Cecilia I saw
that she was placidly stirring her cup. It might be that one was not
expected to manifest amusement in Miss Hollister's utterances; and I
was anxious to adjust myself to the proper key in my intercourse, no
matter how brief it might be, with this remarkable old lady.
In my embarrassment I rose and offered the bread and butter to Cecilia,
who declined it. The austerity of her rejection rather unnerved me.
"To think, that with all the opportunities for adventure that offer in
this day and generation, any one should waste time on the idiotic
worship of a lot of silly moulders of literary patisserie! It is
beyond me, Mr. Ames, and when I recall that your late father commanded
a cavalry regiment in the Civil War, I fall back upon the privilege of
my age to beg that you will hereafter give the Asolando a wide berth."
"I assure you, Miss Hollister, that I have no wish to become an habitue
of the place. And yet you will pardon me if I repeat that, but for it,
I should not now be enjoying the hospitality of Hopefield Manor."
She lifted her head from her cup and bowed; but I was immediately
interested in the fact that her niece was speaking.
"I think Aunt Octavia is hard on the Asolando," she was saying. "Aunt
Octavia is interested in the revival of romance, and romance without
poetry seems to me wholly impossible. The Asolando makes no
pretensions to be more than an incident in a real movement whose aim is
the diffusion of poetic fire,--it is merely a shrine where the divine
lamp is never allowed to fail or falter."
"And if, Cecilia Hollister, you think that sandwiches named for
Browning's poems or macaroons dedicated to Walter Pater can assist
foolish virgins in keeping their lamps filled, I give you the word of
an old woman that you are in danger of a complete loss of your mind.
The age is decadent, and I know no better way of restoring the race to
its ancient vim and energy than by sending men back to the camp and
field or to sail the high seas in new armadas. The men of this age
have become a lot of sordid shopkeepers, and to my moral sense the
looting of cities is far more honorable than the creation of trusts and
the manipulation of prices, though I cannot deny that but for my late
father's zeal in destroying his competitors in the baby-buggy business
we might not now be enjoying the delicate fragrance of caravan tea."
I continued to flounder in my anxiety to determine just how Miss
Hollister wished to be taken. She spoke with the utmost seriousness
and with the earnestness of deep conviction. If the aims of the
Asolando were absurd, what might be said of the declarations of this
old lady in favor of a return to the age of sword and buckler!
I again turned to Cecilia, thinking that I should find a twinkle in her
eye that might solve the riddle and make easier my responses to her
aunt's appeals. Her reply did not help me greatly:--
"I assure you, Mr. Ames, that the Asolando is a very harmless place,
and that as a matter of fact its aims are wholly consonant with those
of Aunt Octavia. I myself served there for a time, and those were
among the most delightful days of my life."
"And you might still be handing about the Rossetti eclairs in that
smothery little place if I had not rescued you from your bondage. I
assure you, Mr. Ames, that my niece is a perfectly healthy young woman,
to whom all such rubbish is really abhorrent."
I expected Miss Cecilia to rouse at this; but she ignored her aunt's
fling, saying merely,--
"There are times when I miss the Asolando."
"Mr. Ames," began Miss Octavia presently in her crisp, direct fashion,
which had the effect of leading me, in my anxiety to appear ready with
answers, to take a flattering view of my own courage and
resourcefulness,--"Mr. Ames, are you equal to the feat of swimming a
moat under a shattering fire from the castle?"
"I have every reason to think I am, Miss Hollister," I replied modestly.
"And if a white hand waved to you from the grilled window of the lonely
tower, would you ride on indifferently or pause and thunder at the
gate?"
"White hands have never waved to me, save occasionally when I have gone
a-riding in the Sixth Avenue elevated, but it is my honest belief that
my sword would promptly leave its scabbard if the hand ever waved from
the ivied tower."
She nodded her pleasure in this avowal. For a chimney-doctor I was
doing well. In fact, as I submitted to Miss Octavia's examination, I
felt equal to charging a brigade single-handed. Something about the
woman made it possible and pleasant to be absurd.
"If a king or an emperor of Europe should ask you to inspect his
chimneys, would you be content to perform your service in the most
expeditious and professional manner and depart with a nominal fee?"
"Decidedly not, Miss Hollister. On the other hand I should nurse the
job for all it was worth, plunder the public treasury, explore the
dungeons, make love to the princesses, and free the rightful heir to
the throne from his cell beneath the bosom of the lake."
My friends at the Hare and Tortoise would have heard this avowal with
some surprise, for no man's life had ever been tamer than mine. I am
by nature timid, and fall but a little short of being afraid of the
dark. Prayers for deliverance from battle, murder, and sudden death
cannot be too strongly expressed for me. My answer had, however,
pleased Miss Octavia, and she clapped her hands with pleasure.
"Cecilia," she cried, "something told me, that afternoon at the
Asolando, that my belief in the potential seven was not ill-placed, and
now you see that in introducing myself to Mr. Ames at the seventh table
from the door, in the seventh shop from Fifth Avenue, I was led to a
meeting with a gentleman I had been predestined to know."
As we talked further, a servant appeared and laid fresh logs across the
still-smouldering fire. This I thought would suggest to Miss Hollister
the professional character of my visit; but the fire kindled readily,
the smoke rose freely in the flue; and Miss Hollister paid no attention
to it other than to ask the man whether the fuel he had taken from a
carved box at the right of the hearth was apple-wood from the upper
orchard or cherry from a tree which, it appeared, she had felled
herself. It was apple-wood, the man informed her, and she continued
talking. The merits of chain-armor, I think it was, that held us for
half an hour, Cecilia and I listening with respect to what, in my
ignorance, seemed a remarkable fund of knowledge on this recondite
subject.
"We dine at seven, Mr. Ames, and you may amuse yourself as you like
until that hour. Cecilia, you may order dinner in the gun-room
to-night."
"Certainly, Aunt Octavia."
Once more I glanced at the girl, hoping that some glimmer in her eyes
would set me right and establish a common understanding and sympathy
between us; but she was moving out of the room at her aunt's side. The
man who had tended the fire met me in the hall and, conducting me to my
room, suggested various offices that he was ready to perform for my
comfort. The house faced south, and my windows, midway of the east
wing, afforded a fine view of the hills. The room was large enough for
a chamber of state, and its furniture was massive. A four-poster
invited to luxurious repose; half a dozen etchings by famous
artists--Parrish and Van Elten among them--hung upon the walls; and on
a table beside the bed stood a handsome decanter and glasses,
reinforced by the quart of Scotch which Miss Hollister had recommended
for my refreshment.
My bag had been opened and my things put out, so that, there being more
than an hour to pass before I need dress for dinner, I went below and
explored the garden and wandered off along a winding path that stole
with charming furtiveness toward a venerable orchard of gnarled apple
trees. From the height thus gained I looked down upon the house, and
caught a glimpse beyond it of one of the chain of lakes, on which the
westering sun glinted goldenly. Thus seeing the house from a new
angle, I was impressed as I had not been at first by its size: it was a
huge establishment, and I thought with envy of Pepperton, to whom such
ample commissions were not rare. Pepperton, I recalled a little
bitterly, had arrived; whereas I, who had enjoyed exactly his own
training for the architect's profession, had failed at it and been
obliged to turn my hand to the doctoring of chimneys. But I am not a
morbid person, and it is my way to pluck such joy as I may from the
fleeting moment; and as I reflected upon the odd circumstance of my
being there, my spirits rose. Miss Hollister was beyond question a
singular person, but her whims were amusing. I felt that she was less
cryptic than her niece, and the thought of Cecilia drove me back upon
Jewett's story of Wiggins's interest in that quarter. I resolved to
write to Wiggins when I got back to town the next day and abuse him
roundly for running off without so much as good-bye. That, most
emphatically, was not like dear old Wiggins!
I had been sitting on a stone wall watching the shadows lengthen. I
rose now and followed the wall toward a highway along which wagons and
an occasional motor-car had passed during my revery. The sloping
pasture was rough and frequently sent me along at a trot. The wall
that marked the boundary at the roadside was hidden by a tangle of
raspberry bushes, and my foot turning on a stone concealed in the wild
grasses, I fell clumsily and rolled a dozen yards into a tangle of the
berry bushes. As I picked myself up I heard voices in the road, but
should have thought nothing of it, had I not seen through a break in
the vines, and almost within reach of my hand, Cecilia Hollister
talking earnestly to some one not yet disclosed. She was hatless, but
had flung a golf-cape over her shoulders. The red scarlet lining of
the hood turned up about her neck made an effective setting for her
noble head.
"Oh, I can't tell you! I can't help you! I must n't even appear to
give you any advantage. I went into it with my eyes open, and I 'm in
honor bound not to tell you anything. You have said
nothing--nothing,--remember that. There is absolutely nothing between
us."
"But I must say everything! I refuse to be blinded by these absurd
restrictions, whatever they are. It's not fair,--it's inviting me into
a game where the cards are not all on the table. I 've come to make an
end of it!"
My hands had suffered by contact with the briars, and I had been
ministering to them with my handkerchief; but I fell back upon the
slope in my astonishment at this colloquy. Cecilia Hollister I had
seen plainly enough, though the man's back had been toward me; but
anywhere on earth I should have known Wiggins's voice. I protest that
it is not my way to become an eavesdropper voluntarily, but to disclose
myself now was impossible. If it had not been Wiggins--but Wiggins
would never have understood or forgiven; nor could I have explained
plausibly to Cecilia Hollister that I had not followed her from the
house to spy upon her. I should have made the noise of an invading
army if I had attempted to effect an exit by creeping out through the
windrow of crisp leaves in which I lay; and to turn back and ascend the
slope the way I had come would have been to advertise my presence to
the figures in the road. There seemed nothing for me but to keep still
and hope that this discussion between Cecilia Hollister and Hartley
Wiggins would not be continued within earshot. To my relief they moved
a trifle farther on; but I still heard their voices.
[Illustration: This discussion between Cecilia Hollister and Hartley
Wiggins.]
"I cannot listen to you. Now that I 'm committed I cannot honorably
countenance you at all; and I can explain nothing. I came here to meet
you only to tell you this. You must go--please! And do not attempt to
see me in this way again."
I was grateful that Wiggins's voice sank so low in his reply that I did
not hear it; but I knew that he was pleading hard. Then a motor
flashed by, and when the whir of its passing had ceased, the voices
were inaudible; but a moment later I heard a light quick step beyond
the wall, and Cecilia passed hurriedly, her face turned toward the
house. The cape was drawn tightly about her shoulders, and she walked
with her head bowed.
I breathed a sigh of relief, and when I felt safe from detection
climbed the slope.
Pausing on the crest to survey the landscape, I saw a man, wearing a
derby hat and a light top-coat, leaning against a fence that inclosed a
pasture. As I glanced in his direction he moved away hastily toward
the road below. The feeling of being watched is not agreeable, and I
could not account for him. As he passed out of sight, still another
man appeared, emerging from a strip of woodland farther on. Even
through the evening haze I should have said that he was a gentleman.
The two men apparently bore no relation to each other, though they were
walking in the same direction, bound, I judged, for the highway below.
I had an uncomfortable feeling that they had both been observing me,
though for what purpose I could not imagine. Then once more, just as I
was about to enter the Italian garden from a fallow field that hung
slightly above it, a third man appeared as mysteriously as though he
had sprung from the ground, and ran at a sharp dog-trot along the
fence, headed, like the others, for the road. In the third instance
the stranger undoubtedly took pains to hide his face, but he, too, was
well dressed and wore a top-coat and a fedora hat of current style.
I did not know why these gentlemen were ranging the neighborhood or
what object they had in view; but their several appearances had
interested me, and I went on into the house well satisfied that events
of an unusual character were likely to mark my visit to the home of
Miss Octavia Hollister.
IV
WE DINE IN THE GUN-ROOM
Cecilia sat reading alone when I entered the library shortly before the
dinner-hour. She put down her book and we fell into fitful talk.
"I took a walk after tea. I always feel that sunsets are best seen
from the fields; you can't quite do them justice from windows," she
began.
She seemed preoccupied, but this may have been the interpretation of my
conscience, whose twinges reminded me unpleasantly of my precipitation
into the briar bushes at the foot of the pasture, where I had witnessed
her meeting with Wiggins. My admiration gained new levels. Her black
evening gown became her; a band of velvet circled her throat,
emphasizing its firm whiteness. It seemed incredible that I had seen
her so recently, in the filmy dusk, talking with so much earnestness to
Hartley Wiggins. It was my impression, gained from the few sentences I
had overheard by the road, that she did not repulse him, but that some
mysterious, difficult barrier kept them apart. Where, I wondered, was
Wiggins now, and what were to be the further incidents of this singular
affair?
While we waited for Miss Hollister to appear, she continued to speak of
her joy in the hills. It is not every one who can admire a sunset with
sincerity, but she conveyed the spirit of the phenomena that had
attended the lowering of the bright targe of day in terms and tones
that were delightfully natural and convincing. And yet the far-away
look in her eyes suggested inevitably the scene I had witnessed and the
phrases I had caught by the roadside. Wiggins was in her recollection
of the glowing landscape,--I was confident of this; and poor Wiggins
was even now wandering these hills, no doubt, brooding upon his
troubles under the clear October stars.
Dinner was announced the moment Miss Hollister entered, and I walked
out between them. Miss Octavia Hollister was a surprising person, but
in nothing was she so delightfully wayward as in the gowns she wore.
My ignorance of such matters is immeasurable, but I fancy that she
designed her own raiment and that her ideas were thereupon carried out
by a tailor of skill. At the Asolando and when we had met at tea in
her own house, she had worn the severest of tailored gowns, with short
skirt and a coat into whose pockets she was fond of thrusting her
hands. To-night the material was lavender silk trimmed in white, but
the skirt had not lengthened, and over a white silk waist she wore a
kind of cut-away coat that matched the skirt. An aigrette in her
lovely white hair contributed a piquant note to the whole impression.
As we passed down the hall she talked with great animation of the Hague
Tribunal, just then holding a prominent place in the newspapers for
some reason that has escaped me.
"The whole thing is absurd; perfectly absurd! I know of nothing that
would contribute more to human enjoyment than a real war between
Germany and England. The Hague idea is pure sentimentalism,--if
sentimentalism can ever be said to be pure. I will go further and say
that I consider it positively immoral."
This new view of the matter left me stammering. Cecilia, I saw, had no
intention of helping me over these difficult hurdles that were
constantly popping up in my conversations with her aunt. This
delightful old lady in lavender, the mistress of a house whose luxury
and peace were antipodal to any hint of war, continued to baffle me.
She had ordered dinner in the gun-room, but I thought this merely a
turn of her humor; and I was taken aback when she led the way into a
low, heavily raftered room, where electric sconces of an odd type were
thrust at irregular intervals along the walls, which were otherwise
hung with arms of many sorts in orderly combinations. They were not
the litter of antique shops, I saw in a hasty glance, but rifles and
guns of the latest patterns, and beside the sideboard stood a gun-rack
and a cabinet which I assumed contained still other and perhaps
deadlier weapons. At one end of the room, and just behind Miss
Hollister, was a sunburst of swords, which gleamed with a kind of
mockery behind her white head.
The small round table was conventionally set, but this only added to
the grimness of the encompassing arsenal. A bowl of crimson roses in
the centre of the snowy cloth would ordinarily have mitigated the
effect of the grim walls; but I confess that the color reminded me a
little too sombrely of the ugly business for which this steel had been
designed. But for the presence of Miss Cecilia, who was essentially
typical of our twentieth-century American woman, I think I might
readily have yielded to the illusion that I was the guest of some
eccentric chatelaine who had invited me to dine with her in a bastion
of her fortress before ordering me to some chamber of horrors for
execution.
There seemed to be no reason why one of those keen blades on the wall
might not find its way through my ribs between a highly satisfactory
plate of _potage a la tortue_ and a bit of sea-bass that would have
honored any kitchen in the land. No reference was made to the
character of the room; I felt, in fact, that Cecilia rather pleaded
with her eyes that I should make no reference to it. And Miss
Hollister remarked quite casually as though in comment upon my
thoughts:--
"Consistency has buried its thousands and habit its tens of thousands.
We should live, Mr. Ames, for the changes and chances of this troubled
life. Between an opera-box and a villa at Newport many of my best
friends have perished."
"I have thought myself that Thoreau had the right idea,"--I began
hopefully; but she raised her finger warningly.
"Mr. Ames, the mention of Henry David Thoreau is wholly distasteful to
me. A man who will deliberately choose to whittle lead-pencils for
chipmunks and write a book about a moist sand-pile like Cape Cod
arouses no sympathy in me. And these well-meaning women who are
forever gathering autumn leaves, or who tire you in spring by telling
you they have found the first pussy-willow feathering, and who make all
Nature odious by their general goo-gooings, bore me to death. There is
no such thing possible as the simple life. I give you my word for it
that it is only in the most complex existence that the spirit of man
can thrive."
I am only a chimney-doctor; I have never been able to make any headway
in discussing things aesthetic, sentimental or spiritual with persons of
sound conviction in such matters. A bishop with whom I once roamed the
English cathedrals confessed to me his sincere belief that in the days
of the inquisition the gridiron would have been my rightful portion. I
was fearful lest my hostess should suggest the mediaeval church as a
topic, and this I knew would be disastrous. As an abbess she would, I
fancied, have ruled with an iron hand. But with startling abruptness
she put down her fork, and bending her wonderfully direct gaze upon me,
asked a question that caused me to strangle on a bit of asparagus.
"I imagine, Mr. Ames, that you are a member of some of the better clubs
in town. If by any chance you belong to the Hare and Tortoise,--the
name of which has always pleased me,--do you by any chance happen to
enjoy the acquaintance of Mr. Hartley Wiggins?"
Cecilia lifted her head. I saw that she had been as startled as I. It
crossed my mind that a denial of any acquaintance with Wiggins might
best serve him in the circumstances; but I am not, I hope, without a
sense of shame, and I responded promptly:--
"Yes, I know him well. We are old friends. I always see a good deal
of him during the winter. His summers are spent usually on his ranch
in the west. We dined together two days ago at the Hare and Tortoise,
just before he left for the west."